The start of this blog has been delayed so I'll take you back in time to where my journey took off from. It was this Sunday that I finally began my journey to Cornell. Till now the feeling of leaving my job and going back to school had not sunk in. Frankly, it didn't then either. But I was happy to let go of the comfortable corporate life to take up what really interested me. I was excited to embark on the next phase of my career that would really be a defining moment. I was going to begin life as a Graduate student in the Engineering department at Cornell where I would major in Financial Engineering.
It has been a long ride preparing for this time and I'm sure that when it begins time is just going to fly off. The day before I had to pack my luggage and arrange it in a manner so that I can sustain with opening just one bag, I had three. During the evening I had gone for a nice walk at Baltimore harbor. It was such a lively atmosphere with throngs of people swarming the entire place having food, singing, dancing, playing music or cheering for the street performers. Although I had thought of staying back at home to plan the coming week, it was a rejuvenating experience to take a stroll in the middle of so much action besides the sea!
Finally the day came and I stuffed all my bags in the car to leave for the bus stop. I was excited and apprehensive. Excited for the day long journey and apprehensive if it'd go as smoothly as planned and unfortunately I saw the first set back, jammed freeways. It was hard to believe so much traffic could exist on a Sunday but thankfully we had some time on my side and with some bypasses and short cuts, we managed to reach DC but the problem didn't end. Half the intersections were blocked due to God knows why and we were trying our best to recall the infinite crossings in the area and then applying different combinations to arrive at the shortest available path to our destination. With a turn every other second the GPS was also finding hard to coordinate and provide directions but finally we managed to reach our stop with a few minutes to spare. It was another task to carry the entire luggage till the boarding point and then stuff it inside the bus with enough room to spare for other's.
And so there was another momentary feeling of victory, when the bus started, to know that nothing could possibly go wrong now, at least nothing that could put me out of schedule to reach Cornell today. As we pulled out of the city and headed towards Baltimore I made a complete use of the time and spoke with my family back home, with my mom, dad, sister, aunts, uncles and friends. Time swept quite fast and it wasn't until a couple of hours into the ride that I realized we have reached almost midway in time but not so in space, there was quite a bit of traffic. I was also looking forward to meet a colleague of mine who had had a 4 month long stint in the Capital One US office and so I had left office before meeting him for the 'last' time. So around 4 pm when I was actually supposed to reach within the next 20 minutes, I did a quick recheck and google maps showed that I was not to be in NJ until the next hour and so I passed the information to him. Finally, after about 45 minutes, as predicted, I reached the greyhound bus terminal at Newark Penn Station in NJ. I was expecting my luggage to have been pushed behind and so I didn't scurry to get off the bus. Fortunately my colleague had found his way to the bus stop and was right behind me when I turned and there I had a big helping hand. I chatted with him for about an hour or so before my college friend came over and hurriedly put my luggage in the car and we zipped off after a quick round of goodbyes. This was to be the final leg of the journey.
I was a bit let down by the fact that I didn't have a camera and so couldn't take pictures but it wouldn't have mattered as I would have come to know in the next few hours, yes, it became quite dark. But, nevertheless the first pictures of approaching Cornell, however bright they were, would be pinned down in my memory. Just as we were on the cusp of reaching Ithaca I could feel the fresh air of the mountains, the energy in the wind and the serenity in the lake! Although I was a bit taken aback when my phone couldn't catch the T Mobil signal but it regained life when we reached Ithaca. My friend drove around Collegetown, the happening place right next to Campus, and the noise and giggles, even at that hour, were high enough to bring back memories of the internship days! All of us were quite tired, especially him since he had been traveling for the past 3 days up and around NYC so we then hit his home. I put all my stuff in the house and we headed for a round of the place where he showed me the malls, my department and the campus in general before we hit the bed.
So this was my first day, actually night, at Cornell.
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